Book Review

Dennis A. Rondinelli and G Shabbir Cheema. Ed, 2003. Reinventing Government for the Twenty First Century; State Capacity in a Globalizing Society, Kumarian Press, Bloomfield, USA

Derick W. Brinkerhoff and Benjamin L. Crosby, 2002. Managing Policy Reform; Concept and Tools for Decision Makers in Developing and Transitioning Countries, Kumarian Press, Bloomfield, USA

Peter H. Daly and Michael Watkins, 2006. The First 90 Days in Government; Critical Success Strategies for New Public Managers at All Level, Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, USA

When I came across with the idea of strategic management in the context of ‘looking out’, ‘looking in’ and ‘looking ahead’ in the book of Brinkerhoff and Crosby, I was contemplating many aspects of management (Decentralization, Performance Management, Efficiency, Leadership etc). In this process of identification and concentration, there are two basic concepts, Learning and Capacity Building, which inspired me to build my argument here further, considering the fact that both learning and capacity building have been extensively highlighted as a process. However, these two basic concepts have been broadly dealt by Rondinelli and Cheema in context of state, while Daly and Watkins (The 90 Days in Government…) evidently shows that learning enhances the performance and also motivates the individual to change behavior.  This is also true that both learning and capacity building are effective tool, which generate effective involvement in subtle way for policy change and implementation.

Since the book (Brinkerhoff and Crosby) defines the ‘looking out’, as setting priorities, identifying constraints,  ‘looking in’ as to identify what to achieve, which kind of institution structures require for developing processes and managing human resources, and ‘looking ahead’ as envisioning sustainability. Without promoting learning environment and consistent effort of capacity building, the journey from policy idea to sustainability would be quite challenging in development context. The human resources are important player here to build effective institutional arrangement for making the policy effort sustainable. Therefore, the role of policy champion is significant not merely for policy implementation, but also to build his or her team. 

In the book entitled “First 90 days in Government...” says that learning is combined with increasing credibility and good decision making capacity, which forms a kind of ‘virtuous circle’. In these two books, the learning has been identified as a process and also seen as strategic tool to understand the complexity of new situation and to identify the opportunity in future.

When Rondinelli and Cheema suggest in the book that globalization has forced the state to redefine the development policy, where the local economy get integrated with global economy, human resource to be developed and its capacity to be enhanced,  market as an important institution to be promoted and opening economy or introducing liberalization to encourage competition and transparency. There is hardly any alternative for the state to go away from these policy change.

This is generally believed the learning is based on individual motivation in conventional sense. But learning is to recognize challenges as well as opportunity. On the basis of recognition, learning is shared and future action plan is structured. However, this is also here to clear that failure is also a strong motivation for learning in strategic management perspective.

Consequently, there are many states in the global era facing the learning deficit and institution of economic development need to be stimulated through a kind of policy arrangement where learning and capacity building process get integrated with the vision of nation building. The capacity building of technical and functional leadership is essential in the era of globalization but for introducing creative change in political and economic affair of state, there is need to adopt and assimilate best practices from other part of the world. Therefore, all authors agree that the decentralized governance encourage inclusiveness in decision making, broadening and deepening the participation and active role of state in establishing greater equity.

There are many management issues and aspects, which directly or indirectly depends upon the learning and capacity building component in broader perspective. This can also be said that learning and capacity building are two side of the same coin. The learning builds capacity of individual and organization. In this process, the organization creates social and human capital. 

In 21^st century, Governance is considered as the core value, which determines the outcome indicators and integrates the process for the policy implementation. Decentralization process not merely encourages the participation of each stakeholder in decision making, but provides a wide range of choices to individual, to organizations and also to states also. This can be vilausalized in Daly and Watkins’s idea of STARS (Start Up, Turnaround, Realignment and Sustaining Success ), which shows that every challenge also comes with new opportunity.

The successful decentralization is based on institutional arrangements and leadership (policy champion), where state takes legislative measures and enforces rule of law. This does not simply ensure that decentralization is panacea of successful implementation of policy. But, as Rondinelli and Cheema argues that ‘strengthening the capacity of public institutions’ would able to create enabling environment for successful policy implementation and its sustainability. However, the building capacity of human resource and involving private as well as non state actors in implementation process also help in mobilizing resources and strengthening partnership.

The communication and knowledge sharing is another aspect, which promote the learning and capacity building. In the global era, the communication is also a strategy tool, where public awareness and policy advocacy are combined. The communication establishes coordination among the different stakeholders, between different institutions of governance (law enforcing agencies, media etc) and also assists international community to establish norms of global governance.

The five case illustrations in Brinkerhoff and Crosby’s book and some chapters (Pro Poor Policies for Development, Globalization and the Role of the State, Creating and Applying Knowledge, Innovation and Technology) and  in Rondinelli and Cheema’s book identify that the challenges for implementation are enormous but waiting for the right moment is not the solution. The strategic planning to involve different actors and institutions would initiate a dialogue, which help in truth building and information sharing. The widespread use of technology has increased access of information among public. Technology empowers both the community and the institutions in the same way.

This has been acknowledged that the external factors are complex and resist the policy change. This is not the issue of external factors or internal politics, this is human nature that maintaining status quo is important for them and changes are seen as potential tool of elimination. Why some policy is successfully implemented in one place but miserably fail in other place? The answer lies in SWOT analysis, where internal capabilities and external threats are identified, helps in process mapping and also classify strategic issues in policy implementation.

Resolving the policy challenge, the idea of workshop in Brinkerhoff and Crosby’s book is excellent master piece. The workshop would be an opportunity to bring the community leaders together and also to share the objective and goal of the project or program, which is to be implemented in the near future. In using the workshop as a tool of establishing collaboration, partnership and the learning from this effort, the implementing agency to make the strategy for policy implementation. All three books clearly pronounce that building partnership enhance the organization capability to foster its values and vision.

In sum up, we can say that both learning and capacity building are also not free from the challenges. However, the emphasis of recognizing challenges in the failure is another motivating factor for strategic planning and implementation. Therefore, a well established monitoring and evaluation system in every organization are need of hour and its indicators help in making effective implementation strategy. As Daly and Watkins present that the change is imminent, so the capability enhancement of individual should be consistent efforts at organizational level.

While Rondinelli and Cheema’s book broadly recognize the value of learning and capacity building for making the good governance possible. In the book, the participation, partnership, transparency and equity are seen as guiding principles of good governance. The success of these guiding principles depends upon, how the learning environment enables the individual to make his or her decision and how his or her capacity is built to provide them choices.

Health: A Problem of Institutional Unavailability or Structural Deficiency

In a country like India, where most part of the country, portable water is a distance dream, the linkages between the health and poverty is increasingly visible (Qadeer, 1995), the caste-class divides have been identified as key aspect of existing inequalities in access to healthcare (Baneerji, 1982). 

National Sample Survey data indicates that expenditure on health care is the second most common cause for the rural indebtedness, despite of claims of success in immunization, but 200,000 infants die every year of tetanus, almost 65 percent of all death among women are caused by disease group that are predominantly infectious in nature and only 2.5% of death are related to childbirth, 28.6 percent of death among them are caused by major infectious disease like TB, malaria, cholera, pneumonia, dysentery, jaundice and 12.5 % deaths are due to childbirth and condition associated with it. Despite this reality, the only communicable disease that is emphasized is HIV/AIDS. Even here its link with poor health system, is not adequately emphasized.

The health issue in India, specially, the women health has been recognized an important factor, in which education is positive variable for promoting better health to women. Even taking this consideration in evaluating the overall spectrum of women health, the simple conclusion is that the half of the total population of women in India would remain unhealthy and unable to cooperate because there is still half of the Indian women are not educated. The challenge in macro perspective is complex to resolve but the micro perspective also provides the complex picture but, here is the scope of possibility to understand the issue of women health in better dimension.

When we analyze the data available in the NHFS- 3 clearly shows that, there are 41% women having no education, 23% having more than 8 years of educational exposure and 14% women are in between 8 to 9 years of educational exposure. When we relate this figure with the educational attainment or completion of number of years in the educational institute with the understanding about the health related issue, the basic question comes in our mind is that is educational content really covers the topic of women health in the school in India?

The health related issues in school level educational content in India hardly provide the prevalent health challenges in the Indian society and the covering women health issues in the school or adding in the educational curriculum in India, is still a social taboo especially in the government run schools.

The quality of education is one of the major concerns in India. In the prevailing scenario, the idea of education with the better women health needs to be studied in micro and household perspective. This is one of the major indicators which shape the women health in the lifelong spectrum. The household is not simply a unit, but consists with ‘production, consumption, residence, reproduction, socialization or combination all these.

Besides these, the household is the immediate health environment of its members, who share water source, sanitation facilities, breathing space, a hearth, and other facilities’ (Meera Chaterjee, 1989). There is further differentiation within the household on the basis of gender, age, role and so on. The heterogeneity of the prevailing circumstances within a particular location has important implication for health because there is different set of standard and norm prevails in this dimension.

Education both means and ends for HER

During the late 19^th and 20^th century, the social reformers advocated significantly to educate women. Even the role of British rule in promoting education among girls in India was also commendable. During the period of girls education was popular among the selected group of people, who were politically active in the freedom struggle. Objectively, the women education was mean to teach ‘the ideals of Indian womanhood’(Chapter 9, A Century and Half’s Journey: Women Education in India, 1850s to 2000; Aparna Basu, in Edited Bharti Ray; Women in India; Colonial and Post-Colonial Periods).

Apart from colonial rulers, the role of charitable trust, private endowment, Christian missionary schools was quite significant in promoting education in India and still the best educational institutes are being managed by the private trust or organization in India.

The Constitution of India views education as the potential instrument of social change, bringing social equality and enhance opportunities for social mobility. Even Article 45 of the Constitution of India clearly states that ‘the state shall endeavor to provide within a period of ten years from the commencement of the Constitution, compulsory education to all children up to the age of 14 years’.

Apart from the Constitutional obligation, the Government of India appointed many commissions (The Indian Universities Commission, headed by Dr Radhakrishnan in 1948-49; The Secondary Education Commission in 1952-53; The Education Commission also known as Kothari Commission in 1964-66) and committees (Durgabai Deshmukh Committee in 1958; Another Committee in 1963; The Committee on the Status of Women in 1971-74)  to look after the issue of promoting education to everyone in general, but among women in particular.

When we observe the Government of India efforts on the basis of the Five Years Planning period, the many efforts were addressing the need of the educated women and the women education was not yet recognized as instrument of personal development. The emphasis of educating women enabled them to deal their marriage life effectively. Therefore, a series of home science course was introduced in many universities in India.

During the First and Second Five Year Plan, the women education was ambitiously linked with the professional enhancement intervention and the Durgabai Committee in 1958 recognized this fact that there was urgent need to take bold effort in allocating more fund for primary education and suggested to establish a National Council for Girls and Women’s education. 

The National Education Policy Resolution in 1968 touched the issue of gender discrimination and left with any suggestion of ‘implementing the common curriculum’ (Aparna Basu), but was unable to provide even the workable strategy at the national level. However, all these commissions and committees stressed the need for empowering women, ‘that is making them capable of guiding their own destiny and becoming self reliant through exposure to education and survival skills, including income generation’.

Although education was recognized the pivotal factor of national development since the time of independence, but recognition of the school took a long time as another "Temples of modern India" (First Prime Minister of India, Nehru’s reference to Bhakra as Temples of modern India, on October 22, 1963, while dedicating Bhakra Dam to the nation).

This is also here to understand that India was rapidly growing as the planned economy and role of the government was seen as significant in every sphere of life. Second, the industrialization was adopted as a mean for national development and growth. During this period of time, the Government did not prevent the promotion of education but shifted the nature of concentration in education. A large number of schools were opened in the urban areas and the technical education was also promoted as this was considered as the need of hour. The urban elites were less concerned about the rural India because the industrialization was the core development agenda till mid 1970s in India.

In this macro level development design, the people from the micro level (rural areas) are generally seen as potential labor force in the production system of industry. The rural women were insignificant at this stage of time, as an important human resource. While, the development of the women was focused to make them ready to take care of the family and for which, education was the least required instrument. During these periods of time, the concept of women education and empowerment was hardly an important agenda in most of the countries in the world.

This seems sometime contradictory to compare the educational improvement among women between the present and past period in India, because, in the agenda of industrialization, there was particular significance attached with three kinds of resources (Ashutosh Varshney, 1995), a) food for the increasing urban population b) labor to man expanding industrial workforce c) saving to finance industrial investment.

In the recent time, the changes in many countries have been recognized in the area of girls’ education and empowerment of women. A series of changes and women movements evolved at the global stage in 1970s. The women were conspicuously absent within the modernization paradigm of economic development and the real development model was based on market and economic growth.

The widespread criticisms of the modernization project from academia and developmental activists were gradually being observered by the world. Easter Boserup (1970) criticized modernization project, which harmed the women in Asia and Africa. She was also pioneer in evolving the concept, Women in Development. The development world also observed significant change in the area of women and how women’s issues to be conceptualized-‘from welfare based frameworks through productivity focused approaches to empowerment based strategies’ (Aradhna Sharma, 2008).

Meanwhile, the United Nations declared 1975 as the International Year for Women and the first Women Conference in Mexico generated a new interest and debate on women’s issues. In the development paradigm, the transition to empowerment was represented as a journey from welfare to Women in Development (WID) to Gender and Development (GAD). 

Identifying Heterogeneity, Possibility and Equality= EQUITY

Women constitute almost half of the total population in India and their involvement in different walk of life has been improved but still lag behind the male counterpart. This is quite difficult scenario of comparison, when the status of women is compare with men.  Even at global stage, the huge gap between women’s and men’s educational achievement (Jejeebhoy, 1995) and also gender disparities prevail in employment scenario. This is easy to conclude that the patriarchy or its effect on socio-economic or cultural structure is solely responsible for this discrimination at India and also at global level. But, the question of gender discrimination goes beyond the paradigm of patriarchy.

This is principally acknowledged that the educated and economically independent women behave positively in the household situation and less gender discrimination is expected in this kind of household. In certain extent, this co-relational aspect show that the improvement in the health status of women in many countries. But, there is another argument which shows that the role of women education in bringing about declining fertility should not disregard the role of children’s education, especially immediate cost of such education to parents, as being instrumental in setting off changes in the parents’ fertility behavior (Caldwell 1982). This positive correlation of the education among women and their fertility is also not significant in decreasing the gender discrimination in many countries.

The situation in South Asian countries, especially India, is quite different. There are many studies and reports clearly show that the key reason that mothers prefer to invest in boys more than girls is a perception that the returns are higher from boy child when he becomes adult.

When we think about health in general and women health in particular, the whole idea of better women’s’ health is defined in the macro perspective. The World Health Organization (WHO) has defined health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well being”, the sheer objective of the comprehensive definition of general well being rather than reducing the concept of health in to diseases. Therefore, the status of women in India in context of one or two variables cannot be judged but, these variables expand the horizon of analysis and provide the dimension to look ahead in improving the overall status of women.

Noted Indian sociologist rightly described India as “a congeries of micro regions” (Srinivas, 1978). The status of women is also not free from the socio cultural and historical variation on the basis of regions, classes, castes, religions, economic groups, family and kinship patterns, culture and social practices. On the one side, despite of the clash between modern and traditional value system in the society and the improvement of women status is gradually moving ahead in the society too.

The changes in the status of women are positive sign and this is a gradual process, but the kind of change in the status of women is equally happening in every part of the country, this is a big question? Some visible educational achievement by girls student and but also working in the areas, which was traditionally a boy zone, which anticipates about the brighter side of status enhancement of women in future.

Numerous strides have been taken over the last three decades to enhance or rather to improve the status of women in India. However, there have been some notable achievements, such as a ‘14.87 percent increase in female literacy whereas male literacy rate rose by 11.72 percent. A statistical review of women’s status reveals the many challenges that remain exist in the country. There is slow progress in many areas and when we observe the literacy rate among the women of tribal, dalit, backward classes and minority specially Muslim community, the percentage speaks a different language. This again arises question on the whole idea of women’s status in India. Even the classification of the women from Urban to Rural areas, the visibility of women in the urban area is better than the rural areas. The “invisibility” (Presvelou, 1975) in the form of physical and social among the women is quite prevalent in many countries, but the ‘the rural women in South Asian countries, (except Sri Lanka) more invisible than anywhere else in the world, with the exception of the Middle East and North America (Population Change, Development and Women’s Role and Status in India; UNDP, 1975).

There are many valid reasons behind the invisibility of the rural women in India, in which, one of the significant one is lack of access to resource and slow pace of socio economic mobility in the rural family status. However, the experience of gender discrimination is also being held by the visible women in India. The top officers in Indian Administrative Services also face the gender based preferential treatment and rules (Naila Kabeer and Ramya Subrahmaniaan 1999) in their posting and career growth. The gender based discrimination is largely reinforcing the stereotyping image of women in India; irrespective of the women belong to rural area or working as top officer in the government.

The status of women has certainly improved and developed in many fronts (education, health, political leadership at Village Councils) and the changes in the societal attitude towards women are also changing though slowly. The social mobility of women in India is more socially and culturally advantageous than male social mobility. The mobility of the women inspires many girls to follow them. This is hard to statistically prove that whether the inspiration or dream matters in enhancing the social structure or not, but this is considered the first step to make one’s ready to change one’s life. As far as women’s political mobility is concerned in India, the situation is also not better in the other countries, especially among the developed countries of the world too. For instance, Switzerland ranked 12^th in the United Nations’ Human Development Index (HDI) Ranking.

However, the policy to promote women in leadership through affirmative action has created more space for women in leadership position at village level in India. The ongoing demand for such kind of affirmative action would be helpful to bring more women into the highest level, initially at least to participate in decision making process.

SHE Vs HE or Unfair Status

The educated women in India are healthier, empowered, socially and economically mobile and having access to information and opportunity more than illiterate women. Is this a metaphor or real situation about the status of women in India? This is also very similar analogy exists with the Indian man. Even educated man also having access many opportunities in comparison with the illiterate fellow. There are many issues and challenges in dealing with this kind of situation in India. On the other hand, there are many similar situation equally effecting both men and women of the similar socio economic group.

There is agreement that the disparity and deprivation among the women is quite high than man in India irrespective of women belong to either high or low socio economic status. Proving this point would be a himalayan task at this juncture that because in the comparative paradigm, the low is always compare with the high status, while in the case of women or gender, the situation in low social status or high social status is more or less same. Therefore, this is generally said in India that in term of gender equality, every women is dalit and deprived. The reference of deprivation and inequality is different in the form of comparative degree and status.

In last many decades, a number of initiatives and programs were evolved to address the women’s issues and empowering them by ensuring their participation in decision making. The programs and projects have its own limitation and also have its own values too. However, the perception about the women empowerment and development is also differently perceives in different socio cultural and economic group in India.

The status of women in India is must see within a dynamic context, as intricately connected with social, economic, historical and political processes. The poor record of women’s rights protection, less number of women engagement in the formal sector employment, socio cultural and geographical challenges, weak social infrastructure and hostile environment condition have been further impediments to improving the status of women in India. This is also true that, in term of geographical challenges, the urban women’s problem is different from the rural women, but in the context of independent decision making, the situation is equally worse for both groups of women in India. There are also many exceptional examples of high social and economic mobility of women in India.

An analysis of women’s status in India, necessarily takes a multi-faceted scope, examining women’s social, economic, physical and emotional well-being.  This paper provides an overview of women’s status in India, ranging from education, literacy, including sex ratio, the status of women's health, including maternal and reproductive health, violence against women, and women's representation in politics and the workforce.  It concludes with a summary of existing and the past policies and programs for women.  Improving women’s status in India requires combating the societal forces that reproduce gender inequities and targeting interventions in different sectors and at all levels of society.  Grassroots development must be combined with an effective policy framework and political will in order to advance the status of women in the country.

I am not going to deny the conceptual and structural nature of inequality among women but try to assemble the efforts and initiatives in the area of education, health, work participation, social security and how these efforts and initiatives has improved the status of women in India. This is an agreement here, that the education has played a significant role in India. Almost every Indian family, weather rural or urban encourage their children to go to school, conditioning that school is available in proximity and children’s performance in the school is moving up. The remarkable enrollment record in primary education in India is the best example of the said assumption of parental preference.

The inspiring fact and figure shows that at the time of the formation of Republic of India, the number of literate among the total female population was between 2% to 6%. The consistent efforts both at government level and awareness at community level through the NGOs and women movement show the impressive improvement in female literacy in India. According to 2011 census, literacy among women has improved in India, though this figure is still low in comparison between the world standard and even with the male literacy within India. The women’s health and nutritional status is inextricably related with the socio cultural and economic arena.

During the period of Six decades, the availability of schools and educational institutions has increased in numbers and the level of awareness among the community also influential in improving the literacy rate among women in India. These factors play significantly in bringing positive change in the life of the Indian women and also affect the family and newborn baby’s health status. In the recent decades, the women’s involvement in education and some improvement in their health status has  also improved, which does not mean that the wave of improvement has been able touch every Indian women. At macro level, the women status has gone up and visible, but the micro level situation is not quite impressive. 

THE CITY YEAR- Sustaining the Sustainability

The profound challenge in scaling out the social innovative practice into new locations is how to make the intervention effective or successful within a short period of time. In this process to ensure deliverable, the wheel is reinvented but, the basic principle of scaling up is that wheel should be reinvented on the basis of terrain (geographical location) and context (nature of implementation strategy), which require changes in design of the wheel. This seems that City Year has all the effective supporting mechanism to expand its approach and philosophy in other location. Analyzing and assessing the City Year expansion strategy, this shows that expansion strategy of City year is critical as well as challenging.

Both scaling out and scaling up of any expansion plan of social program requires ecosystem which consists of local capacity, organizational design, effective participation, leadership, information and linkages, learning from failure and innovative approach.

The core mission of City Year is that young people can change the world and their involvement in well planned program ensures them to learn while working with community and working in the organization. However, diversity, citizenship and private sector investment has been evolved as three strong pillars to achieve the mission. The City Year has been evolved in tremendous process of learning and experience, while working with young people in different federal programs. Historically, there were number of programs in the USA, which were reasonably effective in addressing needs and aspirations of young people, but the approach and philosophy of City Year are different than other programs.

The basic approach of City Year is to build a team, in which diversity is driving force. Diversity has never been seen as important component in earlier youth centered programs and projects. In fact, diversity component differentiates City Year from other youth programs. Apart from this, it underlines the significance of citizenship and private investment because building young people capacity help them to do better in education, public speaking, community development.

There was a consistent struggle in the City Year from implementing vision into reality, convincing others to believe on vision, tough task of fund raising, program development during the initial period of evolution of City Year. But the significant part of this struggle was that they considered time would be important component in implementing City Year’s philosophy into reality. Therefore, they decided that initial two years would be spent in planning, implementation strategy, fundraising and program development before starting ‘a full year program in Sept 1989’.

After getting first financial support from the Bank of Boston, they were able to recognize that the idea of City Year had its potential to go ahead. However, the priority of this program was to involve diversity, which was also facing challenging task. Diversity is a value loaded term and without proper planning and organizational culture, this can jeopardize the ongoing effort to address this sensitive issue in program and project.  Therefore, City Year started a process to imbibe the need to promote shared idea, symbols and tradition’ in initial periods. The integrative process helped the organization to start working and also assisted them to resolve day to day challenges.

In fact, City Year has emerged as value based organization, where every activity were designed and planned to motivate corps members and staffs members ‘a way of doing things’. Communication and sharing stories were emphasis for building inclusive and cooperative culture in the organization.

Some activities, such as NOSTUESO, physical exercises, rapping, cheering were developed as powerful inspiration tools for crop members and these were ‘religiously’ used before the work started. In the initial periods, every effort was used to build an organizational identity and also encouraged both staffs members and corps member to build informal relationship. Everyone was learning from each other, which was enhancing efficiency and strengthening effective implementation process. Acceptability of new ideas and perspectives were welcomed and created enabling environment to implement these to learn the possibility of integrating with the core philosophy of the City Year.

The most effective aspect of City Year was that there was a passion and commitment from top to bottom, which was helping them to recognize the challenges and also enabling them to foster the potential of organization in the working areas. Everything was not planned but every step was recognized as learning opportunity to be effective among the young people and also to make them efficient to do better in their life. 

I would like to share 6Cs (context, confidence, capacity, cohesion, connection and Cash), which are significantly apparent in City Year’s approach and functioning. The strength of City Year is its model, which are encouraging young people and engaging them in creative and productive activities.

Market potential and rate of return in City Year cannot be quantified but the long term impact of its programs and activities are visible. City Year is working with young people and their involvement in different set of activities ensure behavior change and building community. A survey shows that there are corps members, in which ‘65% in higher study, 69% are working’. This indicates that program and activities of City Year do has high potential to address the need of market and its rate of return can be higher in long time. This is generally assumed that more years of education increases the chances of more earning, which increase national financial health in long run.

Products and services of City Year are extremely important to address its core principle of diversity, citizenship and private investment. In these three pillars, diversity is one of the most important guiding forces in the organization. Most of products and services are efficiently evolved and effectively implemented in the working areas of City Year.

The impact of these product and services is quite visible when school principal recognizes that the involvement of corps members among the school children has created hope and vision of how to live. During the young age, the impact is visible in those activities, which are able to address the need and aspiration of diverse group and motivate young person to learn new skills. The products and services of City Year not merely address the need and aspiration of different group of young people but also enable them to be effective citizen in future. 

Does economic growth really lift the poor?

It has been a matter of intense debate since the 1950s to date that the economic growth and development also positively affects the poor population. As the socio economic inequality increases in the initial period of the development of the country, the economic growth does little in reducing poverty (Kuznets (1955). But economic growth is unequally distributed and effects of growth on poverty reduction will be less or more depending on whether the incomes of the poor grow by less or more than average (Deaton, 2003).

In fact, the economic growth plays vital role in reducing poverty at large scale, but economic growth is not a magic bullet to reduce poverty. Within the past decades in China, consistent economic growth has lifted more than 20 percent of the poor population out of poverty. Nearly 250 million poor people were out of poverty, but the income inequality during the same period of time has doubled. The income and wealth gap between urban and rural communities in China is highest in the world. Life expectancy of an urban Chinese person is 5 years more than his rural counterpart. In highly developed provinces, the literacy rate is significantly high but, there are many provinces including Tibet, where merely half of the populations are able to read and write (UNDP, 2005).

Even the success of reducing poverty in the East Asian countries, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore is largely based on policies ranging from land reform, universal basic education, public housing and primary health care system. This is also true in most part of the world that the nature of the political economy is also responsible for creating more poor people and more inequality in the country.  When the inequality is high, the rich use their wealth to secure outcomes favorable to their interests, influencing everything from government spending in the area of higher education rather the primary education, using tariffs and protection mechanism in trade to maintain monopolies, private health service provisions and its concentration in the urban areas (Perkins, Radelet, Lindauer 20006).

Even global economic impact affects the poor population locally in a significant manner. The number of people living in extreme poverty in 2009 is expected to be 55 million to 90 million higher than originally anticipated before the global economic crisis (MDG, 2009). This shows that poverty is not static but a new set of group falls in the poverty while the effort of reducing poverty goes on. There are many studies (Krishna 2007) that show that there are significant numbers of people falling into poverty while at the same time people coming out from the poverty. The debate of falling and coming out has its own importance in recognizing effective measures to address the poverty. But, The poverty is relative term and this ‘can not be understood unless in relation to how others in society live( Haskins and Sawhill,2009).

The poverty travels from one generation to another generation with the same nature or may be in the worse form. The changes in the education and professional status in the poor families within a generation is still a distant dream. Having food, shelter and clothing that meet basic needs of poor people not just sufficient to move up in the social and economic ladder, the most important to provide and give their children a greater opportunities  (Uphoff, 2005). I did a study in my Master course during Duke University, interviewed 300 families in Rajasthan state in India, which clearly shows that there is no major change between the father and son professions. Here, the change in the profession has been evaluated on the basis of income and status. The good news is that the educational level of the son has been improved in comparison with the father education level.

  

This has also been studied in the United States , where ‘42 percent of American sons whose fathers had earning in the lowest quintile remained stuck at the bottom, and slightly smaller fraction of American sons rise from the very bottom to very high’ (Haskins and Sawhill,2009). In this kind of socio economic situation in major part of the world give new insight to understand the complexity of poverty and its impact over the health.

Are poor responsible for poor health????

Generally, Poor people don’t have enough material or financial resource to avail the health facility. When they fall ill, they avoid going to doctor. They normally go to the doctor only when their health problems are in unbearable shape. They are unable to buy expensive medicines or also avoid buying medicine because of not having enough liquid amounts. This also discourages the pharmaceutical corporation from spending large financial outlays in the research and development on the poor man’s disease. The involvement of many organization such as, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Clinton Foundation, individual initiatives etc, have helped the poor to afford the medicine against the market price.

The immunity and resistance level of poor people are generally weak because of consistently malnourished patterns of dietary habit since their childhood. A large number of poor people also start working at an early age and with the irregular and malnourished eating habits that makes them more vulnerable to infectious diseases. Sanitation and clean water is also a major problem for the poor population in both urban and rural areas, but the situation in urban areas are quite worse and raise the question over the citizenship of poor people. 

A large number of urban populations are engaged in the informal economy, where health and social security is not provided. Even the labor income in this sector is not regularized or rule of laws are not followed. Since almost every countries either signatories or rectified the ILO Declaration on child labor, which prevent employing child below age 13 in commercial establishment an illegal activity, but in most of developing country, a large number of children are in labor force. Most of the employment or jobs are in low productivity sector where ‘poor job quality, a lack of job security, low wages and a lack of access to social security coverage. This situation is often referred to as labor informality.  

Informal workers in urban areas of Latin America accounted for 44.9% of all workers’ (Social Panorama of Latin America, 2008). Mumbai is one the biggest cities in India. The total population of the city is around 12 million, which is a population of 1.2% of one-sixth of the world's population. Almost 40% of its population lives in slums or other degraded forms of housing and 10 percent of the city population are staying on pavement or homeless. This is also interesting that the half of the population in Mumbai occupies only 8 percent of the city’s land and this half of the population in Mumbai has almost ‘negligible access to essential services, such as running water, electricity, ration card, toilets. Mumbai's gigantic restaurant and food service economy is almost completely dependent on a vast army of child labor’ (Arjun Appadurai 2000). In almost every big city in the world has similar kind of situation and a large army of urban poor is another dimension of the policy challenge.

The main issue of contention here is that who is responsible for this trend and pattern of falling into poverty almost in every country? How reliable this is to say that economic growth would lift the all boat? In 1970s, the World Health Organization started a global effort to achieve “Health for All” by the year 2000 and access to basic health was affirmed as fundamental human rights by the Declaration of Alma Ata in 1978 (Hall and Taylor 2002). After 40 years of this declaration, even to access basic health for majority of people in the world is a distant dream.  A significant portion of young age death are because of disease like diarrhea, measles and malaria and a wide health related disparities between poor and rich countries and poor and rich people within countries are growing fast. 

A study by Oxfam shows that 45 percent of Cambodian farmers who become landless have been forced to sell their land because of illness. The first four most frequent reported diseases of those who lost land are malaria, dengue fever, tuberculosis and typhoid. All are preventable and curable diseases. The issue of governance and the accountability of government machinery in delivering health services to the poor people has been questioned in several forum but the big issue is that how to build an effective mechanism involving all the states and non-state actors in addressing the urgency of health service and health outcome of poor people?

A number of international and bilateral organizations are involved in improving the health outcomes of the poor population. A report recognizes that ‘developing countries account for 84 percent of the global population and 90 percent of the global disease burden, but only 20 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP) and 12 percent of all health spending. High-income countries spend about a hundred times more on health on a per capita basis than low-income countries: even after adjusting for cost of living differences, high-income countries are spending about 30 times more on health. Worse still, more than half of the spending in poor countries comes from out-of-pocket payments by consumers of care—a highly inequitable form of financing because it hits the poor hardest and denies all individuals the type of financial protection from the costs of catastrophic illness provided by public and private insurance mechanisms’ (Pablo and George,2006).

Book Review:- The Heart of Change; John Kotter

The Change is inevitable in any organization. In this era of globalization and fast changing technology, this has created immense opportunity and challenges for the organization. The assembly line is shifting; nationality of final product is now universal, supply chain management and innovation is being seen as part and parcel of new socialization process for organizational growth and development.  In this prevailing situation, the change is an attitude and a norm for the top leadership in the organization, which reflects in the organizational structure.

This has been widely acknowledged that organization has its personality and its own culture. The force of socialization affects the culture of organization as well as both prevents and motivates the individual for behavior change. The core essence of change is based on the process and its strategy. John Kotter’s The Heart of Change underlines the essence of dynamic relationship between the “see-feel-change” and “analysis-think-change”.

There is no antagonism in this relationship, but a healthy mistrust and a healthy persuasiveness in the process play significant role in building a culture of not changing and culture of changing. John Kotter delves into the subject of change and how change actually happens. The core issue, which really disturbs the author, is that what the fundamental problem that underlines every revolutionary transformation is. In the first page, the authors clearly articulate that “people change what they do less because they are given analysis that shifts their thinking than because they are shown a truth that influences their feeling”. This sentence itself shows that the change is the end, but its means lie in between the “see-feel-change” and “analysis-think-change”.

Enabling environment and culture of participation is two important pillar of organizational transformation. The change in the organizational culture is a subtle process, which combines the value of social and human capital, visionary approach supported by substantial analysis provide opportunity to leadership in the organization to evolve timeframe and contingency planning for organizational transformation. This is also important here to recognize that the organization is not defined as single entity and human resources are important factor to either support or reject the transformation.

In many ways, failure is important learning opportunity for the leadership. The analysis-think-change approach is important driver of change, which help the leader to communicate the failure in effective manner. This is the time in the organization, when a leader can express the need of urgency for change and identify those resources, which can be motivated and inspired to carry forward the value of urgency and proactively  involve other stakeholder in this mission of change. In broader perspective, the Obama Election Campaign clearly used the need of urgency as paradigm of change in the United States and elaborated it further at international level. In fact, the hope, the need of urgency and the changes is interrelated and interdependent to each other.

The basic difference between the manager and leader is that leader envisions change as inevitable force to break the status quo and internalizes the process of change before suggesting it for wider audience and in broader circumstances. While manager works for the change without considering its impact beyond their roles and responsibility. Here, this is the responsibility of the leader to build a team and also build their capacity to address the essence of the change in better and effective manner. The main challenge of a leader in building team is to identify the right person, who believes and trusts on the outcome of the change. A consistent effort of a leader should be combined with the information sharing, consultation, collaboration between different stakeholders, building joint decision making process. In this way, a leader empowers his teams and provides them a direction, which attains valuable changes at organization level. The participatory approach plays vital role in strengthening and integrating the forces of change in the organization.

The communication skill of leader matters a lot for motivating the team to work hard and the leader able to inspire them. In the book, this has been clearly acknowledge in the following words that “You need to show people something that addresses their anxieties, that accepts their anger, that is credible in a very gut-level sense, and that evokes faith in the vision”. The change is not simply a reflection of objective and motive but a vision, which get shaped on the basis of existing and new opportunity in the organization. The effective communication skill of a leader is essential asset for him and also for the organization. In the process of sharing and communication, a leader enables his followers to celebrate the small success and involve other in the celebration. The big success is not a 100 meter race, but a marathon, where a long time preparation and consistency is required for. The celebration of small success motivates the leader and followers to speed up the process of change and strategically manage the future course of action and goal.

The book asserts that momentum of small successes should not be faded away.  The emotional upliftment of teams and other members of the organization because of the celebration of small successes motivate both leaders and followers. The leader is able to build strategy for the future course of actions and motivation. In action segment, he initiate decentralization process of decision making, try to reduce interdependency and excessive control over the resource, established collaboration and alliances with external partners,  evolves a supporting system, reorganizes the human and financial resources. In motivational aspect, a leader identifies the need of the employees and organization.

Potential Roadmap and Building a Change Methodology:

The road map of change methodology is not an easy task and neither the content of this book can be a magic bullet for every organization to embrace change. The guiding philosophy of this book is that the effective and conscious leadership play significant role in introducing change in the organization.

Having worked in nongovernmental organization, I realized that sense of urgency is always prevalent in generating financial resources, agenda setting, building development proposal, allocating roles and responsibility to staff members. The sense of urgency is neither path driven nor internally generated problem in this organization. The nature of social development is quite different than nature of economic growth. What I feel that the difference between the nature of social development and economic growth is motivating factors, which make the organization to have sense of urgency to bridge the difference and enable the stakeholder to access opportunity. I observed that every organization needs a different kind of leadership approach to address the challenges effectively and sensibly.

After going through this book, I realized that the strategic planning and resource management is key for successful intervention in organizational. The eight steps implementation of strategy requires multilayer preparation. Therefore, the effective leader can prepare the blueprint and mobilize resources for building long term vision and perspective of the organization.

The concept empowerment is quite inspiring for many organizations and also for many leaders. To achieve a functional level of empowerment, leader should persuade his or her team members to create a transformation process witin the organization. In the nonprofit organization, the main challenge is changing behavior of staffs and community member. Here, leader can identify different nature of capacity building training and activities, in which the involvement of staffs and community members ensure that they enable themselves to break their own stereotyped and perception. The vision of the organization provides supporting force to leader to break away the status quo and introduce changes in the organization.

The organization change and its sustainable future are complementary to each other. Many change initiative fails because the action is directionless and lack of communication presents the gloomy picture of future. In kotter’s description “difficulties inherent to the process”- this clearly shows that the change is process oriented and process is developed on the basis of existing resources and visionary approach of organizational future. In last, this is important to share that the organization identifies the need and resources, this is the leadership, which translate the vision into reality.